She nodded her head, bobbing it up and down quickly.
I moved to her and crouched close, her eyes following me the whole way.
I kept hold of them as I said quietly, “You do her no favors, not telling me the truth right now.”
She shook her head again. “I was gonna get us out of here. I was. I promise. Swear. I wouldn’t let that happen. The…the…the stuff I smoked was wearing off. And Peyton has a boyfriend back at home. Something happened, he’d lose it and break up with her and she’d never get over it.”
“Promise me,” I whispered.
“He was…he was…he’s a jerk,” she whispered back, her eyes darting beyond me to where the boy who was on Peyton was standing. “But he didn’t get very far.”
“You weren’t helping her when we came in.”
“’Cause you weren’t letting him close the door on you and I knew they were caught. You’d get in. You’d help her and then the door flew open and I got out of the way.”
I searched the features of a young, high, drunk, terrified girl I did not know to try to ascertain if the worst that could happen happened in my cabin.
She stared up at me, holding my gaze, hers wet and scared, but unwavering.
“I wanna get outta here,” she whispered.
“You got a car?” I asked.
She shook her head again. “We came with them. I was gonna walk Peyton up to the road then call a taxi.”
“Where are you staying?’
“Vista Real Condos, by the slopes.”
I nodded that I knew it, straightened, and turned to Priest. “I’m taking the girls home.”
Priest glowered at me but jerked up his chin. “You deal with them, I’ll deal with this,” he stated.
I didn’t know what “this” was or how he intended to deal with it and I didn’t care.
I only cared about one thing.
So I walked across the cabin and got close to him.
“I want this place cleaned up and I want their asses out of here, Priest. Spic and freaking span and them gone,” I hissed.
“It’ll be done,” he replied tersely.
I looked into his eyes, nodded, and turned.
“I’m gonna get my car. You rouse Peyton. Yeah?” I said to the girl.
She was pushing herself to her feet and wiping her face but she still managed to say, “Yeah.”
I moved to the door, stopped in it, and forced my eyes to the boy standing there.
“One day,” I said, my voice soft, my tone ugly. “You’re gonna have baby girls. One day, you’re gonna have daughters you’ll love more than anything in the world. And then there’ll come the day, the weeks, the months, the fucking years,” I leaned in to him, my voice degenerating, “you’ll lie awake, remembering this night. Remembering what you did to that girl. Scared out of your damned mind that some fucking asshole is doing that to one of your girls. Knowing it could happen because you know, being that kind of asshole, there are tons of assholes out there just like you.”
His face paled and his throat convulsed.
“I pray to God what you did tonight never happens to the babies you’re gonna make,” I stated quietly. “But I’m fucking thrilled you’ll live in terror of it.”
On that, I stomped out to get my SUV.
* * * * *
By the time I got Annabelle (who told me her name in my Rover) and Peyton to Vista Real, got their behinds into their condo (also with no parents, what were these people thinking?) and dealt with Peyton puking for an hour—after which I delivered my lecture to them while Peyton lay sniveling on the couch, curled up against Annabelle, who was cradling and rocking her—and made my way home, it was well past four in the morning.
I drove directly to cabin six.
There was no Navigator. The other SUV was gone too.
It was dark, as were all the cabins, including eleven, where Priest’s Suburban was parked outside.
Apparently, Priest had done his duty and then bedded down for some shuteye.
I found this upsetting. I knew it, I felt it, but I didn’t let that feeling take hold.
It was Priest and I had to accept that.
I had no other choice.
Still, I got out of my Rover, walked up to the cabin, and used my master key to open the door.
I flipped the light switch and saw it was clean as a pin. The smell lingered in the air, which meant I’d probably have to shampoo the rugs and air the place out but there was nothing to indicate it had been trashed three hours before, outside the cigarette burns in the coffee table. I even walked through the bedrooms and bathroom and found they’d cleared out. Not a pair of undies to say those loser kids had ever been in residence.
Feeling slightly better about this (slightly), I grabbed my bat and flashlight that Priest had left sitting on the couch for me, left, locked up, and drove my Rover home.
I walked in carrying my flashlight and bat, dumping both on the seat of the handsome, carved, antique hall tree that was one of the few things that the ex-owners left that I intended to keep.
I left the light glowing in the foyer but headed straight to the dark kitchen.
I did this because that was where the bourbon was.
I made it to the cabinet where I kept my booze and was reaching to it when the voice sounded behind me.
“Why don’t you have a man?”
I jumped, whirled, and stared at the hulking shadow sitting at my kitchen table (my table, not the ex-owners, theirs was gone—it was gently used, oak, sloped arrowback chairs, one thick, sturdy, carved, gorgeous leg holding up the table—I’d found it on Craig’s List, local, and a screaming deal).
I stared at Priest, finding it hard to speak because my breathing had turned heavy.
“Why don’t you have a man?” he repeated.
“I—”
I heard his chair scrape across the wood floor and my body shot straight as he stood, his shadowed presence a menace, even across the room.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in my entire fuckin’ life,” he stated, his voice hushed but pulsing in a way that scared the heck out of me.
But it was his words that made me stop breathing.
“How is it that a woman that looks like you does not have a fuckin’ man?” he asked.
“John—” I forced out.
“That is not my name,” he clipped, his sudden fury blanketing the room. “You know that’s not my name, Cassidy.”
“Okay, Priest—” I tried again.
He leaned toward me threateningly.
“That’s not my fuckin’ name either and you know that too,” he bit out. “You know, woman. You fuckin’ know. So why the fuck do you rent a cabin to me?”
I didn’t reply because there was no answer to that. We both knew it. We both knew I had no business renting him a cabin.
We both knew it.
“Every time I show, I pray to God there’ll be another truck outside your house, a man in your bed. Every time I show, nothin’. You’re alone. No fuckin’ clue why. You the way you are. Goofy. Sweet. Hard-workin’. Happy to sit outside on a porch and sit quiet, doin’ nothin’ but bein’ and listenin’ to a river rush by. The way you look. No man?” I saw him shake his head in disbelief. “It makes no fuckin’ sense. Then you rent a cabin to me knowin’ you should show me the road and that makes even less sense.”
“You need somewhere to stay and I need the money,” I chanced pointing out.
“You needed the money, Cassidy,” he retorted swiftly. “That was your excuse in the beginning. You don’t need it anymore so we both know that’s bullshit.”
I lifted my hands, half-confused, half-pleading. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I wanna know why you have no man,” he returned immediately. “And since you don’t have a man, why you don’t have a dog. And a fuckin’ Taser. And a goddamned can of pepper spray.”
“I—”
“You walk up to a situation like that with a
Maglite and a baseball bat?” he asked, throwing a long arm wide, indicating the cabins in an angry way that made me step back and hit counter. “You rent to a guy like me and walk into a situation like that, you’re fuckin’ whacked.”
“They were just kids. I knew that.”
“They were drunk, high, well-built high school boys with a hankerin’ for pussy and no fuckin’ scruples at all about how they got it.”
I sucked my lips between my teeth because he was right.
“You got a pussy, Cassidy?” he asked derisively.
I didn’t give him the answer to that question because he knew the answer.
Since he knew it, he kept at me.
“Your beauty, five foot fuckin’ five, a slip of a woman with tits and ass, don’t matter you’re older than them, they’re in the mood, they’ll take that beauty, woman. Take it. Use it. Fuckin’ destroy it.”
“I—”
“You need a goddamned man,” he spat.
I decided at that juncture not to speak, mostly because he wasn’t letting me say anything, partly because he was scaring the crap out of me, and lastly because no one could rant forever. He’d eventually burn it out and take off.
He always took off.
He came.
He left.
And we never changed.
But that thought gave me a new fear, a fear bigger than any I’d had in my life.
That fear being whoever he was, whatever he did, what happened that night made it clear in a way he could no longer ignore that I meant something to him, and him being with me, even if he was never really with me, brought me danger.
So he’d never come again.
The danger he might bring did not scare me.
The idea of losing him, though…
I had no idea why, but that petrified me.
My body strung tight when his voice sounded again, this time so guttural, it was tortured.
“Why don’t you have a fuckin’ man?”
His obvious pain slicing through me, my lips moved, and when they did, they did it to whisper, “Honey.”
And then he wasn’t across the room.
He was right there, his arms locked around me, one hand in my hair tugging back and not gently, his mouth crashing down on mine.
I didn’t hesitate even a second.
I opened my lips.
He thrust his tongue inside on a feral growl that shot right through me, straight through, down deep, detonating between my legs.
And I was up, plastered to him but moving swiftly.
Then I was down, back to the kitchen table, Priest (or whoever he was) bent over me, his tongue taking, his big hands moving over me just like I knew they’d be.
Far from gentle.
Rough.
Greedy.
Demanding.
Amazing.
I was ready. His tongue in my mouth, his scent in my nostrils, his big body bent over me, those hands on me, I was ready.
And it had nothing to do with not having a lover for months.
It had everything to do with the man who called himself John Priest.
So I curled my fingers into his thermal and pulled up.
He broke his mouth from mine instantly, arching back. His hands going behind his neck, he tore it off and tossed it aside. Then he moved his arms back around me but his fingers yanked at my thermal. I instantly shot my arms in the air, he ripped it off, and threw it away.
Within a breath, I felt my bra unclasped at the back and his finger scratching between my breasts, jerking it off, the straps scraping my arms that were forced in front of me to accommodate its release.
Then he was bent over me and I was forced back to the table, his mouth tracing a path from my neck down. It latched on to my nipple and he drew it in, hard and sharp.
I cried out, my fingers diving into his hair.
“Name,” I breathed.
He sucked harder.
I squirmed beneath him.
“Name!” I demanded.
He released my nipple and his mouth came to mine.
“Deacon,” he rumbled against my lips.
“Deacon,” I whispered and then he was again kissing me.
My fingers still in his hair, I held him to me and kissed him back, giving him everything, taking all I could get.
I felt his hands at my jeans and I knew what that meant. I wanted what that meant. So my hands went there. Our fingers colliding, I got the button, he tore down my zipper.
Suddenly, I lost his mouth but I didn’t mind (much) because my jeans and panties were being dragged down my legs. I felt them catch at my feet and gone was one boot and sock. Then the other. Finally I was naked on the table, my legs spread with big hands gripping tight at the sides of my knees, and he was down.
As in down.
On his knees on the floor, his mouth between my legs.
Feeding.
God.
Oh God.
Not feeding.
Feeding.
My back left the table. My legs spasming against his grip, he tossed them over his shoulders, cupped my ass in his hands, and pulled me deeper into his mouth.
I dug my heels in his back, my own back arching higher, as a cry escaped my lips and my climax tore through me, shredding me, destroying me.
The good way.
The way it was meant to be.
Before I was even close to coming down, Deacon was over me. I felt the tip of his cock sliding through my wet, he caught where he needed to be and thrust inside, filling me.
“Baby,” I breathed, wrapping my arms tight around him, lifting my knees high, pressing my thighs to his sides as he drove into me.
“Fuck. Years,” he grunted against my neck, powering deep.
Oh God.
God.
He’d waited, holding back, wanting, maybe hoping.
Just like me.
“Years,” I whispered.
“Too long,” he growled.
“Way too long,” I agreed, gliding from the down of my climax into the up of another one as I took his cock and felt his teeth nip my earlobe.
“Beauty,” he ground out.
“You fit me. Perfect.”
“Tight. So wet. Fuck,” he groaned, slamming inside me.
“It’s building again,” I told him, my voice breathy and sharp, the pleasure amping.
“Ride it, Cassie.”
Cassie.
Oh man.
He was right.
This was right.
We were right.
Beauty.
I held on tight and then tighter as I lifted my head, shoved my face in his neck, and moaned my second orgasm into his skin.
He bucked hard and fast between my legs, then with a grunt that rolled into a very long groan, he joined me.
I held on coming down and then I held on tighter listening to him do it.
But as I did, panic gripped me and I tried to get a hold on it even as I fought back the desperation to take everything in. Memorize it with a clarity that meant I’d never lose the memories.
The feel of him inside me. Moving my hands to take in the sleek skin over tight muscle on his back. Drawing him in through my nostrils to memorize the scent of his hair tickling my nose.
Knowing we’d finally changed.
Knowing this meant it was over.
The little we had, the minutiae he’d give me, gone.
He was going to take this, give it, not allow either of us to have more, leave, and never come back.
He stayed buried, his face in my neck, his breath coming even, but even if it couldn’t be the most comfortable position in the world for him when we weren’t doing it, he didn’t move.
Maybe he was memorizing too.
And he was glorious. Everything about him. Everything we’d just shared. Everything he made me feel when he told me I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. When he told me in his own particular way how far I was under his skin. When he kissed me with a f
erocity that was dizzying, touched me with desperation, gave me two orgasms on my kitchen table.
Having all that and knowing I couldn’t keep it, I had to end this.
Now.
And I did that by asking softly, my voice just as afraid as I felt, my words dripping with fear and sadness.
“Now have we changed?”
A low sound tore from his throat as he shoved his face deeper into my neck and his hands pushed under me, his arms locking around me.
“Deacon?” I whispered.
“Fuck, you’re killing me,” he murmured into my skin.
That wasn’t the response I wanted to hear.
But it was the one I knew I’d get.
I swallowed.
Deacon pulled his face out of my neck, one arm from around me, and he placed his big hand along the side of my head as he positioned a breath away.
“We’ve changed,” he said gently.
I closed my eyes and turned my head away.
Deacon pulled out and I moved to roll to my side and get off that table and to my clothes as quickly as I could.
I got the roll to my side in before I let out a quiet cry because I was up in his arms and he was moving out of the kitchen.
“Wh-what are you doing?” I asked, lifting my head to stare at his shadowed profile.
He said nothing but came into color as he walked through the lit foyer to the stairs.
I said nothing either as he moved us up the stairs.
We entered my room and he took me right to the bed. I was jostled as he held me and threw the covers back. Then I was in bed and the covers were over me but he was leaned into me, a fist in the bed at either side, his face super-close.
“Gonna shut down the house. Be back.”
He was going to shut down the house.
And then be back.
He was going to shut down the house and be back.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want hope to bud, bloom then die an early death, turning to ash.
I didn’t want him to change his mind.
So I said, “Okay.”
I felt his finger whisper along my collarbone before he pushed from the bed.
So he could touch gently.
I was beside myself with glee that I had that knowledge.
Beside myself with glee.
Which meant for the first time since John Priest/Deacon Whoever showed up at my door, I was truly happy.
I knew that was wrong.